Well I watched part 1 (of three) of this BBC2 series last night (it was aired on Sunday Night), and I must say it doesn't seem to be up to the standard I would expect of the BBC. I was expecting a documentary that looks at the facts objectively and justifies the conclusions it comes to ... but ... I should've know that this wouldn't be the case when the opening scene shows the presenter (a Scientist) playing with his children on the beach (knowing the BBC they probably weren't his children ... just some child actors) in a very "Tony" type way to show that he was a normal bloke that we could all relate to ...
With these sorts of programs I try to take an open mind and listen to what they say without any prejudgement so that I can make an objective opinion myself ... the guy continually talked about "facts", however mixed in with "facts" where what I consider to be leaps of faith ... the first "fact" he showed was a graph that plotted the CO2 levels over the last 50 years or so, from this graph he concluded that humans have caused CO2 to increase ... eh no ... all this graph shows was that CO2 has risen in the last 50 years, no evidence was given to explain the reasons why CO2 has risen (apart from flashing up images of power stations, cars and planes ... ) ... another thing with this graph that annoyed me was a classic statistics trick - the scale, the graph showed an increase of about 352ppm to about 360ppm (can't remember the exact figures), however the scale on the left started at 350, therefore it would appear to the eye to be a massive leap, if the scale on the left had started from 0 then the increase wouldn't have been noticable to the human eye.
Another thing that irritated me was when the guy was talking about the Hanson report, he stated that the "guesses" made in the Hanson report turned out to be true because current models also predict the same outcome ... hold on a minute, a scientist 15 years ago "guessed" that temperatures would rise by n degs by 2050, and this is proved right by current scientists "guessing" that temperatures will rise by about the same amount ... NO a hypothosis can only be proved true by facts and measurements, not by other people agreeing with them ...
He then starting talking about the correlation between CFC's and CO2, basically if human introduced CFC's could affect the atmosphere then our output of CO2 must also contribute, now I'm not disputing that our CO2 output has an effect on the atmosphere but CFC's are COMPLETELY different, they are not naturally present in the air, therefore introducing a very small amount will cause a significant effect, CO2 however is already present in the atmosphere in relatively large amounts, therefore adding some more will not make the huge difference that CFC's did ... correlating 2 completely different effects just because of 1 common input is NOT scientific ...
I will leave my judgement until I have seen all the series ... just had to get that off my chest ...
Disclaimer: I've probably got some of the statements wrong in this post ... but you can't let facts ruin a good story
